


Fortress

by mysteriol



Category: Final Fantasy VII (Video Game 1997), Final Fantasy VII Remake (Video Game 2020)
Genre: Canon Universe, Drabble, F/M, Falling In Love, Final Fantasy VII Remake, Introspection, Romance, in-game
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-14
Updated: 2020-10-14
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:13:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27008653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mysteriol/pseuds/mysteriol
Summary: One by one, Cloud Strife loses the walls he’s built around himself. [ FFVII Remake, In-Game, Cloud x Aerith ]...Or, how it takes only a day and a half to make a merc lose his heart to a local florist.
Relationships: Aerith Gainsborough/Cloud Strife
Comments: 13
Kudos: 63





	Fortress

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: 
> 
> Confession: I wrote this fic back in May 2020 when I’d just finished Remake. Never uploaded it because I didn’t think this drabble that came from a spur of the moment would warrant a worthy enough spot on the AO3 Clerith community. Ah well…fast forward five months later and here I go saying ‘screw it!’. Let’s just publish this and get it out of my fics stash that never see the light of day. 
> 
> I wanted to lend insight into Cloud’s perspective towards a certain flower girl in the time span of Remake. Lol aside from how he usually just ‘hns’ and ‘urh’ and ‘huh’ throughout the whole game in single syllables.  
> So this fic is based on a few in-game scenes. For clarity’s sake, I’ve noted down which chapter the scene is based on…. Hence, **massive remake spoilers.**
> 
> Disclaimer: **no beta-read** back when I wrote this in May…and not even now ‘cause I’m THAT lazy… lol

**_\------x Chapter viii: rooftop/playground_ **

Cloud’s not used to feeling a wide spectrum of emotions.

After all, he barely acts like he has any more than the emotional range of a teaspoon. To strangers, with his humongous sword strapped to his back, he comes across as an aloof, arrogant fighter, and he’s happy to maintain that façade. To his closer acquaintances like Barret or Tifa, he’s used to acting like a man of few words. He’s direct, honest, and Barret always tells him he’s too blunt for his own good. To AVALANCHE and the people in the slums who know him personally, he’s gotten used to being regarded as the ‘the merc who fixes things’ kind of figure – helping people out, sorting things straight – as long as he gets his money’s worth in the end.

In summary, Cloud Strife enjoys the reputation of being the merc who saves the day regardless. Cool, calm, collected, nothing-ever-fazes-him Cloud Strife. Word gets around, rumors spread. Gossips flame among the words of locals, and Cloud’s used to all of that.

So it completely, and utterly throws him off, when he finds the walls he’s built so high up around himself like a fenced armor, start to crumble slowly, one by one, leaving himself defenseless, the moment **_she_** shows up and stares into his eyes with her emerald pools of boundless green.

Doesn’t make things any easier when she’s _always_ smiling, and is a walking beacon of unbridled optimism and kindness to everyone around her.

Cloud doesn’t remember exactly when the first time the fort he’s constructed around himself so carefully crumbles. Is it that memory of them jumping through roofs under the steel sky in Sector 5, and he’s found it the most natural thing in the world to converse with a lady he’s just only met? They’re up so high, and her eyes are glimmering with mischief and playfulness. She’s mercilessly teasing him, joking about getting into the Turks, while they themselves are trying to outrun them. The irony isn’t lost on him.

That day, he remembers the feeling of his heart floating exceptionally light…

…and that’s the first time he’s actually displayed any vague emotion of being swayed when she loses her footing on the roof and falls. He swoops in like a prince charming, catching her. He tries not to think their faces are only inches apart. They’ve just met, after all – she’s a stranger.

“My hero!” She looks at him like he is a knight in shiny armour. Hers.

_Cracks._

The sound of something crumbles, and Cloud has a mental image of something small but certain shattering in the cages of his chest.

He finds himself staring back into the eyes of an angel. “Never a dull moment with you.”

He’s aware of a low humming starting in the pit of his stomach. Strange, it’s not unpleasant. It’s akin to a feeling of flight – like soaring.

He pushes it away nonetheless. He’s too oblivious. Clueless.

He’s blindsided by the sound of his fort crumbling for the second time, when he’s held hypnotized again by the same pair of eyes that night at the top of the playground slide as she sits so close beside him, admiring his face. He can smell the scent of floral shampoo from her hair – it leaves him for a second drunk.

“Wow, your eyes.” She breathes. So close to him, it makes the hair against his skin stand.

He doesn’t move, afraid of shattering the moment. Their faces are only inches apart.

His heart physically skips a beat by her proximity, and he touches almost subconsciously a gloved palm to his chest, wondering about the ache blooming there. 

Cloud doesn’t understand any of it.

So he pushes it all aside and attributes it to his isolated past and his lack of interpersonal experiences.

…Surely not for the sheer fact that she’s begun to affect him, heart and soul.

-

**_\------x Chapter ix: Colosseum/Wall Market_ **

He finds it increasingly hard to keep his cool pretense around her.

He doesn’t know when exactly he’s done a 360 on his own character. It’s much easier pretending to be aloof and a jerk when it comes to things that doesn’t pay merc Gil. So his mind completely cannot wrap around the fact that he’s turned into a complete and utter worry wart and overprotective bodyguard to keep her safe by his side.

When she stands by him, her pole guarded against her chest endearingly, he tries his darndest best not to look at her. Under the limelight of the Colosseum and deafening screams and shouts of the audience going wild for them as the ‘lovey-dovey’ sweethearts with a thirst for blood (Cloud inwardly wants to laugh out loud at the label the public has brandished them with) – he’s pretty damn sure he hears another _crack._

He instinctively touches his heart— it is sore.

He is dense enough. But in this instance, he looks back and forth between the flower girl and the audience, readies his sword in front of his face in a stance to fight…

...and only knows, he will give his all trying to protect her.

That’s all he understands, for now.

The emotion that clings onto his heart unfamiliarly lingers, begging to be comprehended.

“Stand back!” He calls out to her and immediately jumps right in front to shield her from anything…everything.

He only knows he will not hesitate to kill anyone who hurts her. He is overly protective, overly concerned, overly worried. He’s overly _everything_ these days around her. His knitted eyebrows, creased forehead, constant frown that refuses to let up – are surefire telltale signs he’s turned into a complete worry wart and a sucker for anxiety lately. Not for himself, but for _her_ safety.

He narrows his eyes.

He’s never wanted to protect anything else, _anyone_ else so badly. And do a bloody damn good job at it.

Cloud thinks of the sleazy men in Don Corneo’s mansion. Thinks of all the weird, bizarre things going on in Honeybee Manor. Looks around at all the rabid male fans around the Colosseum now screaming marriage proposals to her.

His fists clench. He’s getting oh so mad.

He has a sudden urge to transport her anywhere else but here. He is half tempted to snatch her by the wrist and get them out of here.

All he thinks is, _this place is too dangerous._

She points out later to him shortly after their first victory, that he’s quieter than usual. What are you thinking, Cloud?

_Worrying…about you._

He wants to tell her the truth, bluntly. But he remembers about the walls built around his heart; reminds himself to keep his ex-SOLDIER composure. So he ends up mustering all his self-control and re-exerts his old persona back onto his tense shoulders. He grips his sword tighter; he moves faster.

He can do this. He will and must win the final fight in the Colosseum and then get them both out of here.

An hour later after their claim to victory defeating Hell House and they’ve shared a hi-five in front of a live audience, he hears another _crack,_ and stares down at his heart.

The ache blossoming in there continues to clench. It is not painful. But he cannot pinpoint for the life of him what that is.

But now he looks up where he is standing on the bridge and she’s right across him – sees fireworks explode all around her, sees her red dress, takes in her gorgeous green eyes, her lustrous hair entangled with red ribbons…

_Crack, crack, crack._

…And then realizes he’s stammering lamely. “S’cuse me.” 

She approaches him, and his knees threaten to give way.

It takes a lifetime for him to cultivate his fighter personality, to so carefully barricade himself from human emotions, to keep a physical distance from people. He has it perfectly memorized – don’t lose sight of the script. Keep the plot. Maintain that impenetrable wall between you, and everyone else. He has it indoctrinated into his memory a long time ago.

But it only takes a second for her eyes to reach the depths of his soul across the bridge that night, and he instantly _forgets_ every line, every mantra, every word. There is no textbook to refer to when she is involved.

He goes off script right in front of her. He stutters. He stammers. He is rendered speechless.

And that’s when he realizes the _cracks_ he’s been hearing all along, are the bricks she’s slowly but surely hammering down his walls.

-

**_\------x Chapter xi: train graveyard_ **

When he grasps on air and loses her to the ghosts, he goes into denial. Cloud doesn’t remember screaming so much someone’s name. At this point, he’s thrown all caution to the wind and is running frantically around the train graveyard like a deranged madman.

He can sense Tifa’s penetrating, confused stare and doesn’t blame her. Whatever has happened to the cool, calm Cloud everybody knows who would always inadvertently save the day?

But he is overwhelmed as he sinks to the floor. His lips are tightly shut. His fists are balled.

Emotions so abstract to him in the past, rush in like tidal waves in a dam. They sit ugly in his chest.

Anger, frustration, guilt.

( _And you call yourself a bodyguard_.)

He spends the next minute scurrying around the dark in a feverish state of panic.

_Crack, crack, more cracks._

He punches a solid fist into the floor, so hard, the pavement cracks.

It physically hurts less than the ache in his heart. He is so tempted to bury his head hopelessly into his hands. He feels he has failed her, has lost her. And now he recognizes this maelstrom of emotions all at once – so certain, so sure - he wonders why he’s been so blind before. A whole plethora of lexicons once lost to his memory now sinks back into him to concretize whatever unfamiliar matters his heart is experiencing.

He’s _desperate._

And as he thinks about the emptiness of her presence clawing and tearing bits and pieces away at his heart each second they are apart, he is painfully aware now of something else.

He’s _fucking scared._

“Aerith!!”

The pavement receives another blow from his fists. He’s taking out his anger and he doesn’t even care if Tifa behind is judging him for turning into someone else entirely.

He’s so different now from who he used to be, he can’t stare into a mirror and call himself Cloud.

But he cares nothing. And only wants her back.

In a distance, he hears the soft sounds of crying.

His ears prick and he hastily springs into action. He runs so fast, he doesn’t give Tifa a chance to catch up. All he hears are the sounds of his heart thudding so hard in his chest, he can barely breathe, and those sounds couple unpleasantly even more with her whimpers.

_Wait for me._

His heart shatters hearing her cry, and he hates himself for leaving her behind.

_Crack._

If anything ungodly happens to her, he knows he’ll never forgive himself.

“Aerith!”

He sees her, crying face buried in her palms, and knows…

He’ll do anything to never see her like this again.

_Crack._

-

**_\------x Chapter xiv: Resolution scene_ **

He’s stopped sleeping well for a few nights now.

There are eye circles all under his Mako-infused blue eyes. He’s exhausted, sleep-deprived, and the sword against his back weighs heavier than before. He swings his weapon slower in fights, he dreads encountering any more monsters in the goddamn slums, and he barely wants to help the locals around anymore, nor could care less about earning anymore spare Gil. 

It’s like he’s lost his will to fight, or live.

Barret keeps reminding him to get some sleep. Tifa tries to keep him busy by introducing him to more slum jobs to distract his mind.

Honestly?

Cloud doesn’t know what else he can do to erase the emptiness around him.

He thinks his world was dark before. But he had _her_ by his side then – her presence radiating warmth and incandescence. He’s gotten so accustomed to that…and then Shinra has to go and take her away and leave his world abandoned to ice again. Now he looks ahead and all he sees is a tunnel of black hole, spiraling him to the depths of hell and there’s no way out…

…Until he gets her back, to him.

He’s lost count how many times now that he’s lost focus and starts going into a trance thinking of a million what-ifs and having dreams about rescuing her, since he last saw her face streaked with dirt on the screen beside Tseng up on the plate.

He knows Shinra. Knows what they are capable of. Knows they’ll hurt her.

And it kills him each second he cannot act to save her.

So he sinks deeper, and deeper.

_Craaaaaack._

He’s a shell of the man he used to be… until that night when she visits him in the flower fields of her house in a dream.

“Everybody dies eventually.”

_Crack._

“You can’t fall in love with me.”

Crack. Crack.

He stands before her, completely vulnerable. He’s got nothing to hide at this stage.

She’s done it all, hammered it all away.

She’s broken down every last wall now with her hand against his cheek. 

Cloud looks at her disappearing figure, beginning to dissolve and join the green ambers of light sifting above them in the night sky.

He finds himself staring down at the flowers she’s raised and left behind. He had caught her the other day talking to them, and she’d told him he won’t believe flowers speak a language of their own. Now he does. Goddamn he’ll speak flowers if it’s the only way he can reach out to her.

Clarity, so distant and foggy, now settles around his thoughts.

“I’m coming for you.” He tells her, and means it, letting the night breeze and flowers carry his words away, hoping they’ll take them to her.

There is a new determination coursing through his veins, a revitalized energy pumping in his blood. The sword on his back weighs less now when it conflicts little with the feelings in his heart.

The dull ache in his heart remains. He touches a palm to it, and a wry smile tilts his lips.

He can’t believe it himself, either.

But with the last remnant of his walls gone, he now realizes he’s been _so, damn, blind._

In the span of time he’s literally fallen into her life through her roof in the Sector 5 church, he’s changed. So damn much.

Changed into someone who yearns to protect her, craves to be with her, hurts if she is hurt, worries incessantly about her safety, desires for her presence every waking second..

…He’s become _soft._

He wants to laugh at his sheer stupidity. It’s taken him _that fucking_ long to learn.

She’d been so close all this time he couldn’t see past what was right before him all along.

“Wait for me, Aerith.” He promises, to the sky, to no one really in particular. But he promises, anyway.

Cloud bends down, picks a yellow lily, and takes it with him.

_“Lovers used to give this when they were reunited!”_

There. She had said it, right from the first time they had met.

That emotion so foreign, so unheard of, so difficult to grasp as a concept…now blindingly obvious to him as he stares into the abyss of her absence.

_Love._

She’s chipped away every last block encasing his heart.

His walls are crumbled. His fort is obliterated.

He’s lost in this battlefield, to her.

He’s gone,

and _fallen in love._

**FIN**

* * *

a/n:

ahhhh~ God just re-reading this all over again makes me want to play Remake once more sigh… good old days when the world went into lockdown and I had all the time I wanted to write fics and play ps4 and ogle over Cloud and Aerith. (basically having a legit excuse to being a bum LOL) 

Yasss comment/review! And tell me that wasn’t as terrible a drabble kinda fic as I thought five months ago and originally just wanted to bury this fic into my recycle bin LOL 

Myst-san


End file.
